Friday, September 23, 2011

The personal is the political

When I first saw this short film, I wondered if I too would end a relationship over differences of opinion about overdevelopment. Probably. Anyway, this filmmaker has made overdevelopment and gentrification as personal as it will ever get.

I'm not sure why he cast a guy in the role of hero and his erstwhile girlfriend as villain, but I'm guessing it was just easier for him to identify with the situation than if the gender roles had been reversed. It is, after all, a personal short, first person, self-narrated. But that poor girl really gets read for trash.

If you watch, wait til you get to the images accompanying Whitman. It's beautiful New York, in black & white. If you like Ric Burns, enjoy. To object to beauty for its familiarity or sentiment is to allow cynicism too far a rein. Anyway, I'm a sucker for black & white.
Phil Vasquez' Song of Relations10 minutes